The new Dada movement

I first came across the food influencer Samah Dada while searching for gluten- and dairy-free dishes. Dada, a twenty-eight-year-old food influencer with regular segments on the Today show, a cookbook, and a 400,000-follower Instagram account, somehow makes being a gluten-free vegan who doesn’t drink look fun. Her skin and hair are positively radiant with nourishment and nontoxicity; she looks very well-hydrated.

Hoping to achieve some of this plant-based glow for myself, I headed to the Instagram account DadaEats and tried to eat like Dada. I started with the desserts, simply for the economy of scale: check out of the grocery store with almond butter, dark chocolate chips, rice cakes, maple syrup and dates, and you’ll be able to make almost any of her no-bake desserts. I made the crunch balls and the chocolate rice cakes, which are the same dessert, but shaped differently. She offers nearly identical sweets in the forms of bars, barks, squares and cookies, give or take a few nuts and seeds.

Graduating to entrées means using a greater variety of ingredients, though not necessarily of method. Dada favors grains and (gluten-optional) pastas tossed in blender sauces thick with healthy cream-and-cheese substitutes. Think: avocado, cashews, tahini, roasted squash, nutritional yeast. I tried a clever vegan butternut squash masala mac ’n’ cheese and, in anticipation of summer, a “creamy” green pasta made of basil, peas and avocado. Both paid for being dairy-free not just with flavor or texture, but with time. Dada’s characteristic Instagram jump-cuts, which stitch together one-second clips of each step in each recipe, easily elide the tediousness of pre-soaking cashews, or waiting for your cooked vegetables to cool before blending them up. The shot that ends each video, of Dada experiencing pure ecstasy at the first bite, seems to play in slow motion after a blitzkrieg of food prep which in real life takes hours. And never mind the dishes. More remarkably than making her fairly extreme food restrictions look fun and delicious, Dada makes them look easy.

You come away from DadaEats wondering what, in fact, Dada eats. No-bake desserts, side-dish pastas and mocktails don’t seem enough to sustain a 30 Under 30 media mogul. Her social media indicates that she frequents New York restaurants and that she has a weakness for upscale plant-based snack foods, so maybe the rest of her nutrition comes through those. Or maybe Dada’s recipes are best enjoyed, as the cereal ads used to say, as part of a balanced diet: a slightly healthier dessert or side dish to round out a meal that includes cheese or bacon or butter. I wouldn’t eat like Dada every day, but I have half a jar of almond butter and a handful of medjool dates left in my pantry, and I know she’ll know what to do with them.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s April 2024 World edition.